As my family prepares for a new adventure in our lives in returning home, my prayer has always been that God will lead us into making right decisions that will keep us in His will for our lives. As if that wasn't good enough, in my sad insecurity, I have also asked that God would confirm to me that we have made the right decisions. So you can imagine my excited surprise when I discovered, what I believe are signs from God, that we had indeed! I was told the other day that there was a French restaurant being opened a block away from where we live, in an old building called 'Brittania'. This was after we had purchased our flight tickets with 'Air France' and had already chosen 'Brittania' as our removal company! Also, when we gave notice to our tenant who rents our flat back home, it turned out that he was just about to give notice himself! Another hard decision we had to make was deciding whether to sell or rent out our current home. This again was confirmed to me when we received our Landlords Registration number which starts off with 376869. There are 3 of us in our family, we have lived in Scotland for 7 years and 68 and 69 are the abbreviated years that my husband and I were born. And if that wasn't amazing enough, for added measure that further shows what an amazing God we have, shopping for a new suitcase, lo and behold, there sitting in a local charity shop was the perfect one for only £4-50! And wouldn't you know it, it was even in my favourite colour purple!! God is SO good and to think that He would do this just for me, when I asked, just makes me love Him even more! God has always been faithful to give me signs when my limited faith has needed it, and I am grateful that I have been able to recognise them all! You may call them mere co-incidences, but to me they will always be proof of my all-confirming God!
In every relationship there is bound to be a conflict of ideas and opinions - only because God deliberately made us all very different, for a reason! Recently, I've discovered the TV program 'Being Erica' and I honestly feel that through watching it, I am being healed of some of my past baggage. The basic theme in these episodes are about dealing with the regrets in your life through the eyes of Erica, who is counseled by a therapist, someone I've come to relate in my own life as 'God'. In last week's episode, the drama was about relationships and how we so often try to manipulate our partners into changing to become the person we have created a mold for. We want them to react and behave in a certain way, and when they don't, we get annoyed. The truth is that no matter how much we want them to change, our nagging or cohersions will not make it so. We are powerless to attempt it and it is a pointless, frustrating endevour to think we can. I have come to learn that we can only change others by first changing ourselves. When we decide to change how we react in certain circumstances, being mindful in how we respond to them, we will soon see many favourable results. The only power we have to change ourselves is by controlling our reactions and to consistently seek God's help in prayer. I believe it is possible to heal all kinds of relationships in this way, even marriage, but only when we do the changing first. We also need to learn to love our spouses for who they are, warts and all! Only when we are able to focus on their good points, will their flaws seem less annoying!
